TechLog: Being a Developer, SD Times 100

Inner Game of Programming by Larry O Brien

 Over the years, I’ve come to believe that flow, more than any other factor, determines productivity

Being a developer is being wrong 200 times per day, but when you’re in flow, those 200 mistakes are part of 400 mind-stretching triumphs.

In programming, as with sports, flow is not achieved by routine; it doesn’t come from playing another game of perfect tic-tac-toe or writing a “sum” function. This is one of the great difficulties of managing excellent developers: Their hunger for new challenges is not merely a preference; it’s necessary for them to be excellent. A Must Read

A number of elements need to react in precise ways for an organization to attain its place atop the charts, each carrying a certain weight. First is innovation. To earn a seat at the (periodic) table, companies must demonstrate that their work advances the state of the art of software development. Hand in hand with that is leadership. Did the company show it was an industry leader through a lion’s share of its market, or by contributing more to an open-source project than anyone else? Did it establish leadership through the open exchange of its ideas with others? And finally there is the buzz factor. Was the work widely discussed in the industry? Was the technology considered must-have by those in the know? In short, did the organization have the right chemistry?
In the SD Times 100, those properties are ALM & Development Tools; APIs, Libraries and Frameworks; Big Data and Business Intelligence; the Cloud, Database and Database Management; DevOps & SCM; Mobile; Quality Assurance & Security; User Experience; and Influencers.